PDF Accessibility: Myths VS Facts

June 5, 2018

In a world with so much data and information readily available, with little quality control, it’s easy to come across material that’s biased, false, or has a lack of abundant facts and proof to back up what’s being claimed. The result? Confusion and even harm to an individual or business following this seemingly factual advice.

This is also true for accessibility. This will be the first in a series of blogs aimed to dispel myths and provide facts to some of the most common types of issues and questions raised with Accessibil-IT.

Myth – A PDF less than fully compliant is “good enough”.

Is a document that is 50%, 75% or even 90% compliant good enough? In our opinion, it is not. Think of it this way; if a person with vision receives a document with 50%, 75% or even 90% of the content available, are they able to understand it properly? Would you consider it complete and accurate? If the answer to that is no, then why would it be “good enough” to give people who use adaptive technology incomplete content? Making your documents fully accessible will ensure people who use adaptive technology have access to all content in the proper order so they can comprehend it.

Fact – A PDF can be made fully compliant with legislation.

ISO Standard 14289-1 (or PDF/UA) has established standards specifically made for PDF. PAC3, which is a free testing tool, tests compliance against these standards. The standards and tools exist, and therefore all that is needed is the expertise to make PDFs accessible.

Myth – Expertise to make PDFs accessible can be learned in a day or from watching YouTube videos.

Fact –The skills to make most documents accessible take much longer than a day to learn. One day training sessions and YouTube videos are not sufficient to learn how to make the vast majority of documents accessible. It is a learned skill that takes sufficient training and ongoing experience to do correctly. At Accessibil-IT we have an extensive in-house training program and skills are regularly upgraded to adapt to changing requirements.

Stay tuned for more myths and facts. Together we can correct misconceptions and create better awareness of document accessibility